


Bedtime Rituals

by Measured_Words



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: 1970s Night Vale, Bedtime Stories, Bloodstone Circle, Boy Scouts, Children, Creepy Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Kid Cecil, Parents and Children, Rituals, Spiders, Stealth Crossover, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-20
Updated: 2013-10-20
Packaged: 2017-12-30 00:11:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1011713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured_Words/pseuds/Measured_Words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prayers in the bloodstone circle, staring warily into mirrors, chicken skin teddy bears...  A typical Night Vale bedtime.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedtime Rituals

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Themistoklis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Themistoklis/gifts).



> Thank you so much for running this exchange!
> 
> Also thank you to ST and FB for betaing and and holding after Cassette came out when I had this half-written @_@

Bedtime Rituals

Cecil's mother clutched his hands tightly as they knelt in the bloodstone circle, reciting the family chant. He wondered if maybe she was scared, but that didn't make sense, really. Everyone knew there was no point in being scared of anything, because the Void would inevitably swallow everything, good and bad, and there was nothing anyone could do about it. He didn't really understand what that all meant, but he did know what it was like to be scared, and not just of the Void. The hooded figures that hung out around the Forbidden Missile Silo were scary, and he was glad he wasn't supposed to look at them, or think about them at all. 

Once they'd finished with the chanting, she let go of his hands, sitting back on her heels.

"Have you prepared any special prayers, child?"

His mother asked him this every night. Sometimes there were prayers he was supposed to say, but he hadn't heard anything about them on the radio tonight. She stared at him a little more intensely when he nodded his head vigorously.

"Un-huh. Earl got his letter about joining the scouts – he showed me at school! I wanna pray to get mine too, and then we can do it together!"

Earl Harlan had been Cecil's friend since before kindergarten. Their mothers were friends, and he thought maybe Earl's father had been taken away by the Sheriff's Secret Police too, and that was why. He'd asked his mother once about it, but she'd just shaken her head. "One is never too young for reeducation, Cecil." she'd said, regarding him fondly for several moments without blinking before ruffling his hair. "Those who go to the mine belong only to the past. We don't ask about them. We never ask about the past." But Cecil liked to imagine that their dads were friends too, and maybe they got to share a cell.

"Very well, child," his mother said, in the slightly-louder voice she used when she knew she was going to say something that the secret policeman (or policewoman, or policeother, or policething) who was recording their conversations would approve of. "The Boy Scouts are a noble organization. We would be glad for you to receive your mandatory recruitment letter." Her eyebrows were furrowed though, so he wasn't sure she was really happy or not. "Remember to pray loudly so that the old gods will hear you." Her lips twitched at their little joke – Cecil knew who he was really speaking up for.

"Okay, Mother!" He used his own Secret Police voice for the prayer, still stumbling a little over some of the words in the traditional invocation. "Dear Old Gods, whose...in-de-cy-pher-able ways are unknowable to mere mortals. I would really like to be able to join the Boy Scouts with my friend Earl. Earl is really keen and he already knows where to find all the best animal bones for making lean-tos. Of course he would get to be a boy scout, but he is my best friend and I want to be just like him, and if I can be a boy scout too that would be super neat!" Cecil didn't tell the Old Gods, or his mother, or the Secret Police just how much he liked playing with Earl. He figured they probably already knew. "Thank you for mer-ci-ful-ly con-do-ning our continued existence, and may you slumber for great ages without need to ma-ni-fest your sanity-rending presences in our town, our great country, or our world."

Cecil waited until his mother nodded his approval before he rose. She would do her own prayers later, he knew – sometimes he heard her wailing when he was supposed to be already asleep.

"Would that we could all be spared. Now go and change for sleep."

Cecil did what he was told, climbing into his footed pyjamas with the picture of Pirate Percy on them, and rejoining his mother in the bathroom. She was already watching the mirror for him, just in case. He still wasn't sure just in case what, really. Of course she'd told him that when he died, it would involve a mirror, but everyone was going to die somehow. His teacher at school said that everyone was dying a little bit at a time. And could you really stop things from happening if you knew they were going to happen anyway?

"Is there anything in there?" He asked anyway, because he thought it made her feel better.

"Only the faceless old woman, child."

Cecil scowled. The faceless old woman was one of those secrets that wasn't a secret at all. She lived in his house and moved things around and sometimes set things on fire or changed the books or the furniture or moved all the things in his closet. He didn't like her very much, but his mother said she wasn't anything to worry about. "Yesterday she took the apple out of my lunch and put a dead spider in!"

His mother didn't reply, just stared ahead into the mirror while she reached for the toothpaste and his toothbrush. Cecil might have protested – he wasn't a baby and could do it himself – but he was still upset about the spider.

"It was the one that always comes out to listen at story time," he grumbled sullenly, trying to catch a glimpse of her in the mirror. He thought he saw something, but maybe it was that his mother had moved. She was mouthing words silently into the mirror, but he could hear the 'beware, be warned, be wary' in his head anyway. "I think it stopped us from getting infested with puppies when the rest of the building had them."

"It was in league with the world government," came a voice from behind him. "And you needed more protein. You shouldn't be so thin."

Cecil pouted, but his mother handed him his toothbrush, and he set about brushing his teeth and washing his face. At least it wasn't a bath night.

Once he was all cleaned up, he followed his mother back into his bedroom. Sometimes she would read to him before bed, and he always liked that. Usually it was just old statements issued by the city council, or lists of banned items and thoughts, but the last time she'd read they'd gotten several pages into the Manual on Interlopers, and it was fun to imaging all the different kinds of strangers who might show up in town, and how to deal with them. He climbed into bed, looking up at his mother expectantly, trying not to think about how empty the little spider web in the corner of his ceiling looked. Instead, he hugged his teddy bear, the taut chicken skin giving a satisfying squish. The pile of blankets on the bed across the room shifted – his brother was, he hoped, already asleep, and wouldn't disrupt any story time with whispering or screeching. He thought Cecil was a baby for letting Mother lead his bedtime routine. But parents, Cecil knew, were not forever. Things happened – it was best to appreciate them while they were around.

At the moment, his mother was only sort-of present – she seemed to be lost in her own world again.

"Mother?" He prompted. "Are you going to read to me tonight?"

"You're not going to be a Boy Scout, child," she answered. "That life is not for you." She turned her gaze on him, or at least towards him. "There are other things for which you must be prepared." Still, she took an actual book off his shelf of library books – _The American Boys’ Book of Signs, Signals, and Symbols_ – and he settled in to listen to her droning voice narrate the chapter on Danger Signs. He could have fallen asleep just like that, but she came to the end of the chapter before he had quite made it.

"Say your final prayer, child," she said as she stood to put the book away, and once again Cecil nodded obediently if drowsily.

"Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Void my soul to keep. And if I die before I wake, I pray the void my soul to take, because there are many fates more terrible than being absorbed by comforting eternal nothingness."

Cecil didn't open his eyes again as his mother tucked him in more tightly, but he liked to imagine her smiling approval as she swept back to the threshold of his bedroom to turn off the light.

"Good night, Cecil," she whispered, "good night."

**Author's Note:**

> [ _The American Boys’ Book of Signs, Signals, and Symbols_](http://books.google.com/books?id=bDbZAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+American+boys%E2%80%99+book+of+signs,+signals,+and+symbols&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wChkUuDWAuSr2wXT9YCgBA&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=The%20American%20boys%E2%80%99%20book%20of%20signs%2C%20signals%2C%20and%20symbols&f=false) is a real book by [Daniel Carter Beard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Carter_Beard), written in 1918. It has everything from semaphore to hobo signs to wacky Cistercian numerology, and seemed an appropriate choice @_@
> 
> [Stealth Crossover](http://creepypasta.wikia.com/wiki/Candle_Cove) \- also seemed appropriate >.>
> 
> [Cecil's teddy bear](http://ivanovvictor.wordpress.com/2013/04/29/chicken-skin-teddy-2/) THIS IS CREEPY YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. It is also adorable. Adorably creepy. Click at your own risk!


End file.
